Meanwhile Hurricane Sarah is sweeping the US. Sarah Palin's great appeal is her apparent ordinariness (just your average moose-hunting mom), although by definition she is extraordinary. I disagree with virtually all of her policy positions - but it's exciting she's there at all.

Palin plays up her hockey mom image, from her soldier son and pregnant daughter to her special needs baby. But equally significant is her background in that very male world of Alaska gas and oil. When Palin calls for energy independence for the US, she is talking about increasing supply, including new drilling in Alaska.

Sarah Palin and I were both born in 1964; I'm sure that like me she was enthralled by seeing the Apollo missions to the moon. The great challenge now for our generation is not to find new planets but to save the one we've got. That's why Nick Clegg is calling for a new Apollo project for British energy independence, based on massive investment in renewables, combined with reduced consumption.

How the US develops its energy policy will determine the world's ability to fight climate change. Let's not get too excited about Hurricane Sarah.

In Islington, stamp duty is the least of our worries

Islington is back to school in the rain, and it's not just the weather that's getting people down. Consumer confidence is at an all-time low, the Bank of England is warning of further downturns, and the OECD says Britain is leading the way into recession.

With all this going on, the government's temporary tweaking of stamp duty seems irrelevant. Here in Islington, house prices start at £200k, so changing the threshold below that is meaningless. Across the country, relatively few buyers will benefit, and only for a year, at a cost to the Treasury of £600m. It's a policy made with eyes on headlines, not the bottom line – and failing on both.

Liberal Democrats want to see more banding of stamp duty relative to house prices, plus the scrapping of stamp duty on all carbon neutral homes. Labour have already cut and pasted Vince Cable's ideas on reducing repossessions, so why not on stamp duty too?

I'd advocate switching stamp duty from purchaser to vendor as well. That would free first-time buyers from stamp duty, and could actually console vendors for falling house prices.

Meanwhile for some of the people I've been helping this week, stamp duty is the least of their worries.

Mehmet has been living in Islington for six years. He works long hours running his small business, a local cafe, and is a positive part of our community. He is sharing his council bedsit with his wife and baby son, and like thousands of others, is on the waiting list for a larger flat.

Grace is the widow and mother of British citizens, but not British herself; she came to Islington when her husband died, to live with her son. Apart from a tiny widow's pension - less than minimum benefit levels - she gets no state aid. Her son is already doing two jobs, and Grace is looking for paid work too; even so, they're afraid they are going to lose their home.

Then there's Amy, a young woman who left a difficult home to live with her sister. Leaving an overcrowded home was good news, but her EMA was not enough to pay her share of the bills, so Amy has quit college for a series of temporary, minimum wage jobs, without much hope for her future.

These are all "hard-working families", Islington-style, the very people the Labour government claimed it wanted to help. They are not failures. But the system has failed them.